This weekends training – A test of your endurance!

I don’t mean we are going to be ‘testing’ your endurance again but both the swim and run sessions involve little if any rest periods. Great preparation for your upcoming events and both sessions should leave you feeling confident you can do the business come race day.

As usual we will start the swim session with some technique drills. It would be great if you could bring your fins and a pull buoy if you have them. Nautilus, the dive shop at 197-199 Mare Street, London E8 3QF, has swim fins at a good price. You have to ring a bell to enter the shop so don’t be put off if the door is locked. I have written a blog about using fins to improve your stroke in the past if you want to take a look.

Well done to all those who completed the 5km time trial at Hackney Marshes. There were some quick times posted by a lot of you and I could see the effort that was put in by all. Nice work! It was a hot morning making it that much more of a challenge to keep the pace going. We plan to do this perhaps on the last Saturday of each month to help gauge progress.

Someone asked me after the session about the purpose of sculling. Not only do sculling drills work well as a warm up exercise to prepare your shoulders and arms for the hard work ahead but they are also great for developing a ‘feel for the water’. It is quite difficult to develop this feel for the water when practising the full stroke so we break it down into different phases. When you get the catch and pull through right it feels like a smooth flowing action, it feels easy but still gives you lots of propulsion. If one of the early movements is wrong (e.g. dropping the elbow and/or wrist) this then disrupts the water flow and will have a knock on effect with the rest of your stroke.

Dan Bullock of Swim for Tri wrote an article called Sculling for Success in the Triathlete Europe magazine. You can read the article here. It is well worth a read and has a video to show you the various sculling positions and correct technique. Give them a go this week and let me know what you think. You might just find that you beigin to get more propulsion in your stroke with the same or less effort.